The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter.

The National Science Foundation is financing the creation of a web service that will monitor “suspicious memes” and what it considers “false and misleading ideas,” with a major focus on political activity online.

The “Truthy” database, created by researchers at Indiana University, is designed to “detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution.”

“This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate,” the grant said.

“Truthy,” which gets its name from Stephen Colbert, will catalog how information is spread on Twitter, including political campaigns.

“Truthy” claims to be non-partisan. However, the project’s lead investigator Filippo Menczer proclaims his support for numerous progressive advocacy groups, including President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority.

Menczer, a professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University, links to each of the organizations on his personal page from his bio at the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research.

The government-funded researchers hope that the public will use their tool in the future to report on other Twitter users.

I’m an Independent voter. I “average out” to be Centrist by agreeing with Liberals on most personal and social issues, while agreeing with Conservatives on most economic and government issues, similar to Libertarians – but not as Liberal and not as Conservative as them. I was born into a Republican family in the oil business. I registered to vote at age 18 in 1974 as a Republican. I became a Democrat briefly during 1994. I’ve been an Independent since 1995. Over the years, most of my friends, co-workers, and employers have been Liberal Democrats. They treated me right. So it’s not that I’m anti-Liberal.

I discovered I’m a “Centrist” in 2008 after taking the World’s Smallest Political Quiz, and from which I learned about Statists. Take the quiz to see what I mean. Then answer the following poll by selecting your quiz result. The quiz has 5 areas on the political spectrum – Left Liberal, Right Conservative, Libertarian, Statist Big Government, and Centrist. In the poll, I’m also asking for where you placed within the Centrist square, if you scored as a Centrist, for Centrist Left, Centrist Center, or Centrist Right. It does not matter if you are above or below center within the Centrist square, just left or right of center within the Centrist square, or in the center of the Centrist square.

Libertarians support a great deal of liberty and freedom of choice in both personal and economic matters. They believe government’s only purpose is to protect people from coercion and violence. They value individual responsibility, and tolerate economic and social diversity. Some of my friends have been Libertarians.

Centrists favor selective government intervention and emphasize what they commonly describe as “practical solutions” to current problems. They tend to keep an open mind on political issues. Many centrists feel that government serves as a check on excessive liberty. I’m a Centrist. I’m similar to Libertarians, but not as far left as they are and not as far right as they are. I’m Conservative on most but not all economic and government issues. I’m Liberal on most but not all personal and social issues. People “average out” to be Centrists. There is no true third choice for most issues to define a Centrist, who basically must “Agree” or “Disagree” on each issue. “Maybe” is not an acceptable choice. “Maybe” is the usual choice of Moderates. Centrists are not Moderates. Centrists know where they stand on each issue. Many Centrists are registered as Independent voters, like I am, or otherwise are Unaffiliated – not members of any political parties.

Left-Liberals, Democrats, generally embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but support central decision-making in economics. They want the government to help the disadvantaged in the name of fairness. Leftists tolerate social diversity, but work for what they might describe as “economic equality.”

Right-Conservatives, Republicans, and Tea Party members have at times been the majority of readers here at The Lantern Journal. They favor freedom of choice on economic issues, but want official standards in personal matters. They tend to support the free market, but frequently want the government to defend the community from what they see as threats to morality or to the traditional family structure.

Statists are the real enemy of everyone else. Statists want government to have a great deal of control over individuals and society. They support centralized planning, and often doubt whether liberty and freedom of choice are practical options. At the very bottom of the chart, left-authoritarians are usually called socialists, while right-authoritarians are generally called fascists. President Obama is a Statist, not a Liberal. So is Hillary Clinton. For comparison, President Bill Clinton is a Liberal, not a Statist.

Statists, like President Obama, are pretending to be Liberals. When they have enough control, then they will betray all Liberals and treat them no different than Conservatives. Statists are the enemy of Liberals, Libertarians, Conservatives, and Centrists.

“Truthy” is the action of Statists, not Liberals.

Liberals want Big Government, but they do not want to give up ALL of their Freedom. If they continue to support Statists, then soon they will have no Freedom, along with everyone else.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke.

IF THIS GOES ON—

Excerpts from Wikipedia article…

“If This Goes On—” is a science fiction short novel by Robert A. Heinlein, first serialized in 1940 in Astounding Science-Fiction and revised and expanded for inclusion in the 1953 collection Revolt in 2100. The novel shows what might happen to Christianity in the United States given mass communications, applied psychology, and a hysterical populace. The novel is part of Heinlein’s Future History series.

The story is set in a future theocratic American society, ruled by the latest in a series of fundamentalist Christian “Prophets.” The First Prophet was Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher turned President (elected in 2012), then dictator (no elections were held in 2016 or later).

CENSORSHIP and REVISION OF HISTORY

The following two paragraphs have been excerpted from the 1986 Baen Book printing of Robert A. Heinlein’s novel titled Revolt in 2100 –from the story titled If This Goes On—:

For the first time in my life I was reading things which had not been approved by the Prophet’s censors, and the impact on my mind was devastating. Sometimes I would glance over my shoulder to see who was watching me, frightened in spit of myself. I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy . . . censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

I had trouble at first in admitting the possibility of what I read; I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious. For example, I learned for the first time that the United States had not been ruled by a bloodthirsty emissary of Satan before the First Prophet arose in his wrath and cast him out — but had been a community of free men, deciding their own affairs by peaceful consent. I don’t mean that the first republic had been a scriptural paradise, but it hadn’t been anything like what I had learned in school.

“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell.

“What if the democracy we thought we were serving no longer exists, and the Republic has become the very evil we have been fighting to destroy?” – Padmé in Star Wars III.

"What if the democracy we thought we were serving no longer exists, and the Republic has become the very evil we have been fighting to destroy?" - Padmé in Star Wars III.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." - First Amendment, US Constitution.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." - Preamble, US Constitution.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke, Whig politician and statesman who is often regarded as the father of modern conservatism.

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." - General George S. Patton.

"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense." - Mark Twain.

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell.